Easy Sopapilla Cheesecake Recipe

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't love cheesecake, but not everyone feels up to making it themselves. That's perfectly fine, because there are other sweet treats out there that are similar to cheesecake, but even easier to whip up at home. One great example? Sopapilla cheesecake. According to Delighted Cooking, this confection has origins in South America and New Mexico and combines layers of flaky pastry with a layer of decadent sweetened cream cheese and gets finished off with a crisp, buttery, sugary topping. What's not to like?

"This is a delicious dessert that is great for many occasions. Dinner parties, birthday parties, book club, brunch or a potluck," Miriam Hahn, who developed an easy recipe for sopapilla cheesecake, says. That's not all: "The other thing I love about this recipe is you can easily make it vegan," she adds. "Crescent rolls are vegan and you can use dairy-free cream cheese and butter. So many people have dairy allergies so it is nice knowing you can make this delicious dessert if you will be serving it to people with food sensitivities."

The base of this cheesecake treat is crescent rolls, which make putting it together easy. "If you don't have crescent rolls on hand you have a few options. You can use a frozen pie shell, frozen pie crust or frozen puff pastry sheets. All will work just fine. You just want to use something that needs to be baked versus a pre-made crust like a graham cracker crust," Hahn explains. You'll also need butter (salted or unsalted will work, though Hahn usually goes with unsalted), sugar, vanilla, cream cheese, cinnamon, melted butter, and allspice.

"The special ingredient in this recipe is the allspice," Hahn says. "I love adding this to baked goods because you quickly get a hint of nutmeg and cloves which is such a good complement to cinnamon in sweet recipes."

Start by preheating your oven to 350 F. While that heats up, take a 9x13-inch baking dish and spread one of the crescent rolls across the bottom, pressing down on the seams so it becomes one big piece of dough. After that, make the filling by using a hand mixer to blend the cream cheese with sugar and vanilla, then spread that on top of the dough.

Onto the second layer! Place the other crescent roll dough on top of the cream cheese, pressing it like you did the first layer. For the topping, mix together the cinnamon, allspice, and sugar in a small bowl. "If you like the idea of using allspice but don't have it, you can substitute a pinch of cloves and nutmeg and a bit more cinnamon," Hahn notes.

Drizzle the melted butter over the dough, and scatter the sugar mixture over top. Place the baking dish in your preheated oven and let it bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until the top is golden brown.

When your sopapilla cheesecake is done, take it out and let it cool for about half an hour so it sets. Then, slice it up (this recipe makes about 15 servings) and enjoy! You can eat these as-is, but as the photos show, they pair well with strawberries and cream, or whatever else your sweet tooth is craving. If you're making this as part of a larger dinner spread, Hahn notes that sopapilla cheesecake "is a traditional Mexican recipe, so of course it goes well with a Mexican meal, but [it's] certainly not limited to this." If you're not making this for a crowd, Hahn says you can refrigerate any leftovers in an airtight container for about five to seven days. Now, the next time you have crescent rolls and cream cheese in the fridge, you'll know how to turn them into an easy, crowd-pleasing treat.